At the New York event, Microsoft unveiled nine handsets planned for the holiday season, including the Focus by Samsung Electronics Co., the Quantum by LG Electronics Inc. and the Surround from HTC Corp. All three will cost $199.99 with two-year service contracts with AT&T Inc. when they go on sale in early November.If I was on AT&T, I wouldn't be buying a Microsoft phone, I'd be buying an iPhone. Competing head-on with the iPhone is like leaning into a left hook. It's as if the people at Microsoft have no idea at all what's going on outside of Redmond, Washington.
* - Windows Phone 7?!? Could they have picked a more awkward name?
3 comments:
Well, I'm not saying that it will work *this* time, but it seems to me that Microsoft's business model has always been to come late to the party, with a product that they developed after watching how the first products in a field fell short (and maybe by buying technologies that other companies developed). And then, they use every trick made possible by their massive size and deep pockets to wrestle market share away from the real pioneers.
After all, MS-DOS was not the first operating system; Windows was not the first windows-based operating system; Excel, Word, and Powerpoint were not the first spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation programs; in fact, I'm not sure that there are *any* classes of software or new technologies that were actually originated by Microsoft.
It will be funny if they fall on their faces with their new smartphone, but they may very well succeed.
Phones are as much a social marker as they are a way of communicating. I just can't see the average person choosing a Windows Mobile phone over an iPhone. It would be like having a Zune when everyone around has an iPod. You'd look like a dork.
Yeah a Windows Phone 7 Phone is a very dumb name. How many times can you say phone in one sentence.
Though from what I have read the new OS is pretty good and way better than previous incarnations of Windows phones. They spent some time creating a good mobile Touch interface OS. Though I am not sold on the look of the OS which reminds me a bit of Media Center, but a little more stark. Not exactly a pretty interface This new phone though is certainly no Kin though.
But the lack of cut and paste and 3rd party multi-tasking is rather odd. What are they competing against the original iPhone?
What cracks me up is Balmer talking about a tablet OS using Windows 7. You would think there new mobile OS would be much better on a tablet.
It is hard to see how the phone is going to compete against iPhone and Android though. The apps for it will be rather minimum for now and since the graphics platform does not use Open GL like iOS and Android, games will take longer to port if they get ported at all. Microsoft made a big mistake listing Angry Birds as game to be ported to their OS on their site and the developers of that great game said they had not intention so far of doing so.
So this OS has a hill to climb, but no doubt will appeal to some business users for editing of Microsoft documents and programs like One Note.
Now what's up with you K T Cat, having a nice thing to say about Apple? :)
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